---
title: The Bubishi (武備志) — White Crane, karate, and a tale of two texts
---

The **Bubishi** is the single most important text linking Chinese boxing to Okinawan karate — the manual that Okinawan masters called **"the bible of karate."** It is also the source of a persistent confusion, because **two completely different works share the name 武備志.** Untangling them is the first task, and a good example of how a careful resource earns its keep.

## Two texts, one name

<Callout type="warning">
  **武備志 names two unrelated works — do not confuse them.**
  - **Mao Yuanyi's *****Wubei Zhi***** (武備志, 1621)** is a colossal **Ming military encyclopedia** — some 240 chapters covering strategy, weapons, naval and frontier warfare. It is a genuine classical text, **public domain**, and digitized (HathiTrust, Library of Congress). It is **not** a karate manual, and it is **not** the book Okinawan masters revered.
  - The **Okinawan "Bubishi"** is a **separate, much smaller, hand-copied folk manuscript** of southern Chinese boxing and medicine. Despite the shared characters, it has **no connection** to Mao Yuanyi's encyclopedia. When karateka say "the Bubishi," they mean *this* one.
</Callout>

## What the Okinawan Bubishi actually is

The Okinawan Bubishi is **not a single authored book** but an **edited anthology of often-unrelated articles** — fragments on [**White Crane**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/white-crane)** and Monk Fist (Luohan) boxing**, on **vital-point striking and grappling**, and on **herbal medicine and healing** — copied and recopied by hand. Its **oldest surviving copies date only to the 1930s**, though the material it gathers is older. As the martial-arts historians Andreas Quast and Benjamin Judkins stress, its value is better understood as **a tradition that conveys legitimacy** than as a reliable historical record.

## The karate bridge

Whatever its limits as history, the Bubishi's importance to karate is real and documented:

- It was **revered and copied by the founding masters of Okinawan karate** — Funakoshi Gichin quoted it, Mabuni Kenwa published a version, and Miyagi Chojun is said to have drawn the name **Goju-ryu** from one of its poems;
- It **explicitly credits its White Crane material to Fang Qiniang of Yongchun (永春方七娘)** — tying the Okinawan text directly back to the [Fujian](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/fujian-arts) crane tradition;
- It is, in short, the **textual artifact of the Fujian → Okinawa transmission** — the paper trail of how southern Chinese crane boxing became part of karate.

<Callout type="info">
  **What's documented, and what's fuzzy.** The *textual* China-to-Okinawa connection is solid: the Bubishi is real, it is Chinese in origin, and it credits a Fujian crane source. The *specific teacher-to-student lineages* of the transmission are much hazier and often legendary. So the wiki states the firm part plainly and flags the fuzzy part as fuzzy.
</Callout>

## Reading it

Patrick McCarthy's **English translation, *****Bubishi: The Bible of Karate***** (Tuttle)**, is the standard scholarly edition — and is **in copyright**, so the wiki **links rather than reproduces** it. Mao Yuanyi's separate 1621 *Wubei Zhi* is public domain and freely readable at the libraries below.

## See also

<PageRef space="notes" slug="white-crane" text="Fujian White Crane (白鶴拳) — the art the Bubishi credits to Fang Qiniang" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="fujian-arts" text="The Fujian Arts — the road to Okinawa" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="source-texts" text="Source Texts — the wiki's other primary manuals" />

## Sources

**[1]** *Bubishi (karate)*, English Wikipedia ([en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubishi\_(karate)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubishi_(karate))) — the Okinawan manuscript, its contents, its 1930s copies, and its role in karate.

**[2]** *Wubei Zhi*, English Wikipedia ([en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubei\_Zhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubei_Zhi)) and the **Library of Congress** copy ([loc.gov/item/2004633695](https://www.loc.gov/item/2004633695/)) — Mao Yuanyi's 1621 military encyclopedia, the *other* 武備志, public domain.

**[3]** Patrick McCarthy, *Bubishi: The Bible of Karate* (Tuttle) — the standard translation (in copyright; linked, not reproduced). Plus Benjamin Judkins, *Kung Fu Tea* ([chinesemartialstudies.com](https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2017/06/30/the-bubishi-gets-its-due-returning-the-bible-of-karate-to-its-chinese-roots/)), on returning the Bubishi to its Chinese roots.